"To allow a more reasoned consideration of the motion to stay, it is ordered that the district court's judgment is temporarily stayed until Wednesday, March 26, 2014," the court ruled.

View full sizeMuskegon County Clerk Nancy Waters looks over a marriage certificate at the Harbor Unitarian Universalist church in Muskegon on March 22, 2014.Natalie Kolb/MLive.com

Muskegon County Clerk Nancy Waters heard of the ruling by phone just after 4:30 p.m. Saturday. One couple sitting at her table who had already taken an oath were considered married, she said. Others still standing in line had to be turned away.

Muskegon County was just one of four counties in Michigan processing marriage certificates for same-sex couples on Saturday, March 22, following a Friday night ruling by a U.S. District Court Judge overturning Michigan's voter-approved ban. Now, marriages won't continue, at least until Wednesday.

"The stay stopped me from continuing," Waters said. "These people that are married, are married."

Waters said that the Michigan couples married on Saturday – about 50 in Muskegon – were legally married and would remain that way. Although there is typically a three-day waiting period on marriage certificates, she had signed a waiver for each of Saturday's licenses.

"The law allows a waiver by the county clerk for extreme circumstances," she said.

These circumstances in the past have included couples who are sick in the hospital, or soldiers leaving on duty, she said. On Saturday, the circumstances cited by Waters were "legal court issues."

Waters said she had begun working out how to do same-sex marriages last fall, when advocates hoped for a ruling from the judge's bench that would overturn the ban.

Her office is not open on most Saturdays, but Waters sometimes holds "full service Saturdays" for Muskegon residents to conduct their business there. She compares her work Saturday filling out the marriage licenses to those events.

"It was another day for me, and I picked it up just like another full-service Saturday," she said.

It remains to be seen what action the courts will take.

"We will still take all these back and get them filed," Waters said of the licenses. "We'll wait for Wednesday to see what has to happen."